Hopper House (The Jenkins Cycle Book 3)

by John L. Monk

  The forcefulness of his glare lessened, allowing me to regain my feet. From the other room I heard Karen gasp. I went to check on her.

  Karen was lying on her back with a stunned look on her face. A few feet away, pieces of broken dinner plate lay scattered on the tiles.

  I helped her up.

  “Oh my god,” she said. “I felt … I think I got kicked … or something.”

  “Are you all right?”

  “I think so. You didn’t get kicked too, did you?”

  I gazed frankly into her pretty eyes and said, “Nope, I feel great. Are you sure something’s not wrong with you?”

  Karen opened her mouth to speak, but a cellphone I hadn’t seen on the floor started ringing.

  “Whoops, must have dropped it when I fell.” She picked it up and answered it. “Hello?” She glanced at me. “Yeah, sorry. Must have gotten disconnected … uh huh … yeah, I’m fine … everything’s fine … right, uh huh … yeah, I know. Okay, talk to you later.”

  When she hung up, she smiled widely. “My skin’s family. They keep calling.”

  I watched her intently. “It’s interesting that you care about them. You seem different.”

  “Everyone’s different,” Karen said. “I don’t judge. I just like to party, you know? I take every skin that comes along. Doesn’t mean I gotta kill people. I mean, unless they’re really bad…” She shook her head. “The landlord and I have a good relationship. As long as I’m on time, he only takes twenty-five percent of what I find.” She laughed suddenly. “I’m saving up to be rich one day. I’ve never been rich.”

  That was odd. “How do you save up? Not like you can have a bank account.”

  “Not true,” she said. “Ever hear of bitcoins?”

  I shook my head.

  “Digital currency. You should look into it. You can store your wallet online and access it anywhere, from any skin. Hard to liquidate quickly, but nobody can take it from you unless you’re hacked or something.”

  I felt like a child. If I’d been able to store money like that, from ride to ride, it would have made things so much easier.

  Karen leaned forward and said in a lowered voice, “So what’s with that other guy? He’s kind of creepy. Is he one of them crazies that likes to kill everyone? Because I don’t put up with that. I just wanna get stoned and watch TV. And maybe have a little fun…” This last with a suggestive jiggle.

  It was at that exact moment the minister walked in.

  “Dan, please come here,” he said, eyes everywhere but Karen.

  I joined him at the other end of the room. “Felix, remember?”

  “Sorry,” he said quietly. “Why won’t she wear clothing? The most excitement I usually get is someone singing Gloria too loudly and making people laugh. You’re used to all this. I’m not.”

  Nate had said almost the same thing back at Tara’s house.

  He glanced at Karen, then jerked his gaze away. She was keeping her distance, trying to listen and not hiding it very well.

  The minister said, “If she is what you say … well … I suppose there are others we can worry about first. That is, if you’re still interested in helping me.”

  I wasn’t interested in helping him. It was a fool’s mission. But he was being so nice and conciliatory and cool that I said, “Let’s just get out of here. We’ll talk about it on the road. Next stop, Delaware.”

  I turned around and raised my voice. “Nice meeting you, Karen. Something came up. I’m sure you understand.”

  Karen’s gaze swept unhappily between me and the minister.

  “You’re leaving?” she said. “Why not stay the night and leave fresh tomorrow? I’m sort of worried after that … whatever it was. Did you tell him what happened?”

  It made sense she was shocked, possibly scared. I’d been a little of both my first time. Which was a good reason to get out now—so that it didn’t happen to her again.

  “You know, ma’am, that’s a lovely idea,” the minister announced. “I’m feeling tired, Dan. I mean Felix. We’ve been nonstop since this morning. I think I’d like to stay the night. Besides, you never know who might show up.”

  His message was clear: he’d leave Karen alone, but that didn’t mean he was done here.

  Chapter Thirty-Six

  “Wonderful!” Karen said and came around with her arms outstretched, probably to give the minister a big sloppy French kiss and a good story for his next confession.

  For all our sakes, I jumped between them. “He hates being touched—it’s a weird mental problem.”

  “Goodness gracious,” he muttered.

  Karen peered at him. “That is weird. What’s with you two, anyway? On second thought, never mind. Ask no questions, make no judgments, pass the time. That’s my motto. So what do you wanna do?”

  Under his breath, the minister said, “We could always watch television.”

  “I’ve been to this house before,” she said. “Bunch of times. There’s board games in one of the closets. I love board games. Brings me back to when I was a little girl.”

  “I love games too,” I said. “Especially Twister.”

  “Hey, I think we have that!”

  “Not Twister!” the minister shouted, startling both of us. “And would you please put your clothes back on, ma’am?”

  Karen gave a small bounce, snatched up her clothes, and said, “Waste of a healthy young body, but oh well.” Then she ran to fetch the games.

  “Mental problems?” he said.

  I just smiled.

  Karen came back with a stack of hits from the last fifty years: Risk, Chutes and Ladders, Candyland, and crown of them all…

  “My favorite,” she said and held up a familiar box: The Game of Life.

  Suddenly, in that strange house, despite worrying about my family, and being in the company of a minister who thought he was a prophet but was really an asshole, I felt happy. It had been a long time since I’d had simple, wholesome fun.

  “Oh, we’re totally playing that,” I said, and grabbed a seat at the card table.

  The next several hours passed in a wave of nostalgia as we played back-to-back games. Karen and I remembered all the rules, so there weren’t any annoying trips to the pamphlet to figure things out. Even the minister seemed to have fun, judging by how quickly he spun the wheel whenever it was his turn. I threw him a covert glance when he landed on the Day of Reckoning square and noticed a genuine smile crack his austere face.

  Sometime around midnight, the temperature began to drop and the wind picked up outside, causing the hole in the back door to let in too much cool air. I got up and searched the closet near the dining room on a quest for duct tape. A casual glance out the front window showed lights coming our way down the narrow road, heading toward our driveway. The area was fairly secluded, and I wondered if it was another hopper.

  I didn’t want more hoppers. Now that I’d seen the landlord’s address, I was done with this whole fiasco with the minister. I never wanted to see one of those snake things again, and that meant no more exorcisms. He could either come with me tomorrow, help me deal with the landlord, or we could go our separate ways—with me in the cool Hummer and him in a rental car.

  At the far end of the drive, an odd thing happened: the headlights turned off and two people got out. They stood there looking at the house. A minute later, they went around to the trunk and opened it.

  I passed the living room on the way to the kitchen.

  “It’s your turn, Dan,” the minister said, an impatient look on his face. “I mean Felix.”

  I went to the pantry and tore through the donation box looking for the .22 revolver and box of ammo. The ammo was there but not the gun. I ran back to the living room.

  “Where’s the gun?”

  “What gun?” Karen said.

  “You called the landlord and told him about us, and now he’s sent a couple of men here to kill us. I’m asking you again: what did you do with the gun in the box?”
/>   The minister said, “What’s going on?”

  I waved him to silence.

  Karen said, “I only called to tell him about the window. When you two were talking, just before I got that weird kick. He asked if anyone else was here and I told him yes. He asked your names and I said I didn’t know his name”—pointing at the minister—“but that your name was Felix, or possibly Dan, and you had a big Humvee. He said you two messed up another house somewhere and I had to stall you or I’d…” She paused, biting her lip. “He said he’d revoke my code and never send another car to pick me up.” She looked stricken. “This is all I have. Drugs, food, sex, board games. And people who know what I’m going through. You two won’t really die, not forever, so I just figured … Look, I’m just trying to deal with this shit too, okay?”

  Shaking my head, I said, “He’s not a hopper, Karen. He’s mortal, and now he’s in danger. And my skin’s a goody-goody. So please, for your own soul’s sake, tell me where the damned gun is.”

  The sound of a door opening carried from the front of the house. Karen looked from me to the minister, then took the gun from her purse. I thought she might hold us captive, but she slid it across the table.

  I grabbed it, checked the cylinder—loaded—then said, “Take cover in the kitchen.”

  Dutifully, the minister and Karen rushed to the low wall dividing the two rooms and hid behind it.

  Behind me, the sliding glass door exploded in a shatter of automatic gunfire. I felt a stinging pain in my calf as I ran for the dining room. Then a man came around the corner with a short-barreled gun. Definitely not a pistol. He didn’t see me right away—he pointed towards the living room where I’d left the light on.

  I aimed at his head and squeezed the trigger. Sure, it was only a .22, but it killed him just as dead as a .45.

  I considered the bigger weapon at his twitching feet. I had no idea how to use it, but recognized the model: an MP9 submachine gun. A peek back into the living room showed a man with the same model gun standing in the doorway. He aimed at the dividing wall and shot it up. Drywall, cabinetry, and appliances were no match for hundreds of rounds a minute. Desperately, I pointed my gun at him and fired the remaining five shots. One of them must have hit him because he staggered and stopped shooting. When he turned and trained his gun on me, I ducked for cover.

  Reloading the .22 would take too long, even if I had more bullets, which I didn’t. I threw it down, grabbed the MP9, and mentally crossed my fingers. More gunshots sounded from the other room. I turned the corner, pulled the trigger, and the gun rained terror and death into the man and whatever remained of the sliding glass door. When I let go, the sound of gunfire was replaced by a loud ringing in my ears.

  “Now that’s a cool gun,” I said loudly, gazing at it in wonder.

  The man staggered to his knees, somehow still alive. He lifted his weapon—or tried to. I shot him again and he fell.

  The man had on a bulletproof vest with a hard plate in the center. Blood pooled underneath him, and lots of it. Despite that, he gave a shuddering gasp, raised his gun again, and fired. One of the shots caught me in the arm and another in the chest.

  I fell down and the shooting stopped. The pain was so intense I wanted to raid the donation box for painkillers. Instead, I rose to my knees, leveled my gun at the man, and pulled the trigger—click click, nothing.

  “Huh,” I said, and promptly passed out.

  When I came to, there was a big scary man standing over me with glowing yellow eyes and … oh, no, that was just the minister.

  Giggling after being shot in the chest hurts a whole, whole, lot.

  “Hang in there, Dan,” he said. “We’ll get you to a hospital.”

  Together, he and Karen carried me out into the cold.

  “What’s your name again?” Karen said.

  The minister said something, but it was all rather fuzzy at this point.

  Her voice carried from far away. “Oh, no … couldn’t be the same Dan that Rose … said she kept him out…”

  Fuzzy and cozy and darker and darker…

  Chapter Thirty-Seven

  I woke up in a hospital connected to tubes and beeping machines and the sounds of staff and visitors walking just outside my door. I felt pretty good. Morphine does that to you.

  The busy nurses and staff breezed over my questions, except for the most basic ones. They said I’d been in a coma for a week after getting shot up pretty bad. Nothing about who’d brought me here.

  A day later, a nice detective named Randy Wilson showed up.

  “How did you get shot?” he said, not bothering with chitchat.

  “I don’t know,” I said, scratching my head with the arm I could still move. The other was strapped across my body. “It’s all a blank.”

  “What’s all a blank?”

  “It.”

  “And what’s it?”

  “Anything can be an it,” I said. “That’s what makes it special.”

  The humorless Detective Wilson and I went back and forth like that for a while. I told him I’d seen a white light back in Seattle, it felt great, and then I woke up in the hospital—my best guess of what George might say if Nate’s experience was universal.

  “How did you get here?” he said.

  “I don’t know.”

  The detective said they’d found me lying on the sidewalk outside a jewelry shop with a tourniquet around my arm and my chest packed with gauze. Whoever left me there had thrown a rock through the store window to set off the alarm.

  No way the minister had come up with a shady idea like that. My guess was Karen—a mutual friend of Rose, apparently, just like Stephen. I just wish I’d told her my real name up front. Maybe she wouldn’t have ratted us out.

  Throughout the interrogation, I kept hoping my doctor would come in and order the detective to leave like they always did in the movies, but he didn’t. I’d only seen him once. He’d slipped in and out quickly, talking nonstop so I couldn’t ask any questions.

  “Who’s Nathan Cantrell?” the detective said at one point.

  “Never heard of him.”

  “He’s paying your hospital bills. You sure you don’t know him?”

  I continued to claim ignorance and said I hoped they found whoever shot me. I expected the detective to get mad, but he didn’t seem to care all that much. Almost like he was going through the motions. After ten more minutes, he got up, thanked me, and left.

  Soon after my first kick, a week after talking with the detective, someone else showed up.

  “I’m Allen Franco,” a short, fat, balding man said, shaking my good hand carefully. “I’ve been hired by Nathan Cantrell to advise you.”

  “You don’t say.”

  “You’re not in any trouble yet, so that’s all I’m going to do: advise. I was asked to bring you this.” He removed a small video camera from a briefcase and handed it to me. “It’s my sister’s, so don’t mess it up. Mr. Cantrell said you’d know what to do with it. If you agree to my help, I’ll need you to sign a few things. Everything you say is strictly confidential, of course.”

  I nodded, and yeah I knew what to do with it.

  After signing the papers, I said, “This’ll probably sound weird. Just roll with it, okay?”

  “I roll with everything, Mr. Connolly.”

  I asked him to shut the door and he did.

  “Hello, George,” I said into the camera after pushing the Record button. “You may have gone somewhere strange, and maybe it only lasted a few seconds, or possibly longer. Here are the basic facts…”

  For the next five minutes, I told the real George where he’d gone to, how he’d been shot, and that I—someone named Dan—had taken possession of his body. I told him if he needed any legal help to work with Allen, and that Nate would pay his bills until he could get back on his feet.

  When I stopped recording, Allen had a strangely embarrassed look on his face.

  “How’s the rollin’ goin’, Allen?”r />
  He swallowed. “I may have rolled to a dead stop, George … Dan, whoever you think you are.” He shook his head. “I wondered why Mr. Cantrell offered me so much money. Now I know.”

  “You still on board?”

  Allen nodded.

  “Sometime tomorrow or the next day,” I said, “I’ll forget everything we’ve talked about. And don’t bother thinking it’s an act, because it isn’t. Just show me that video and do your best in a difficult situation. If you don’t believe it’s real, that’s fine, just play along and earn good money for it.”

  “Whatever you say, boss.”

  After packing the camera and papers into his briefcase, Allen left.

  With the cops handled and George squared away, I lay back and enjoyed the good things in life: morphine, a redheaded nurse who walked by my room every five minutes, and as little hospital food as possible.

  Two more kicks came and went, and I was kicked out for good in the middle of a nap.

  * * *

  Well, that’s a good sign.

  The Great Wherever was back to normal. No gray world with snake things chasing me and swallowing my memories. No winged beings rushing around bumping into each other. Stillness and thought and nothing else.

  One thing I’d hoped for was the return of my memories, but that didn’t happen. My guess was they were gone for good. The lesson was clear—I could choose my time of exit from a ride, but there was a terrible price to pay.

  Thanks to Karen, the landlord knew I’d trespassed in another of his houses. He’d sent gunmen there to kill me and the minister. At this point, no amount of money would placate him.

  After what felt like a week spent hovering in the Great Wherever, I sensed a portal in the void.

  I reached.

  * * *

  “Fuck you, you sick son of a bitch!” someone shouted behind me through a wall of sound coming from everywhere at once.